SNAKE'S REVENGE: The Novelization
by Sith Droideka
Summary: A stunning literary retelling of the 1990 NES classic that sucked so hard Hideo Kojima actually went and made Metal Gear 2.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Before you ask, yes, this is ACCURATE! the game. Or at least as accurate as possible. I haven't actually played Snake's Revenge (because why would I do that to myself?), so this is based off of a let's play. However, I made every effort to be as true to the source material as possible. For instance, ALL of the dialogue is taken DIRECTLY from the game, except for Snake's (since Snake had no lines originally).**

 **That being said, some details were removed to streamline the storytelling, some were added in an attempt to beat some semblance of sense into the game (or rather beat some semblance of character into the protagonist), and some artistic liberties were taken with certain boss fights to make them more compelling.**

 **Hope you enjoy, and hope you don't demand more Metal Gear fanfiction in the future, because I really don't have the time.**

* * *

"Lt. Snake, we received information from our intelligence man at the enemy's base."

It was always so strange to hear people calling him 'Lt. Snake'. Mainly because his full name, Solid Snake, was really fucking weird and made him wonder what kind of drugs his parents were on when they named him.

"They have a weapon. Is it Metal Gear, which you destroyed three years ago?"

 _Yeah, thanks for the flashbacks, asshole. And isn't that the sort of thing your "intelligence man" should be telling you in the first place?_

Logic be damned, Snake had his assignment: to infiltrate the unnamed enemy base and put a stop to all this (potential) bipedal nuclear nonsense. However, unlike last time - _I really should have retired after last time. Why didn't I retire after last time? Why do I keep doing this to myself?_ \- he wouldn't be going this alone. Two men from his unit, FOXHOUND, were to accompany him: John Turner, who looked like a cheap sad-faced Che Guevara knockoff in that beret, and Nick "La Bomba" Myer, a bald black man who vaguely resembled a racist caricature. The former was a spy who was, or at least used to be, with either the Navy or the Air Force, depending on who you asked. The latter was an explosives expert and former(?) Marine who had graduated from Harvard.

Snake himself, as previously stated, really should have retired from FOXHOUND three years ago, after all that crap in Outer Heaven. The things he'd seen there… it'd never been that bad when he was a Green Beret. Well, regardless, he was the leader of this mission and generally considered _the_ expert at sabotaging Metal Gears, despite his having done it only once, and that meant that, well, he just had to hope that these two wouldn't slow him down. He worked better alone.

It was the middle of the night. The chopper had just crossed the Teristan border, and as far as Snake could see, it was just darkness and mountains. As they got closer to the drop zone, he could just barely make out some distant city lights from Teristan's capital, Ishkabibil. Snake frowned. Maybe he needed to brush up on his geography, or else his current events. He'd never heard of Teristan before this mission. And was it just him, or did Ishkabibil sound extremely stupid and fake?

Turner and Myer sat across from him. Turner was sharpening his knife methodically. Myer was polishing his grenades.

Wait.

Snake blinked. Yep, he was carefully buffing each grenade to a near-mirror sheen. Snake was almost tempted to tell him that he didn't have to do that (and also to ask _why_ ) but decided against it, instead looking out the helicopter window again. Almost to the drop point now…

Three minutes later, Snake, Turner, and Myer were on the ground. A jungle. Turner and Myer immediately ran off into the trees - with no instruction from Snake. Although slightly irritated at the fact that he had been forced to take command of the other two and yet they didn't even pause to listen to him, he didn't call out to them or anything. One, that would be bad stealth. Two, again, he worked better alone, so good riddance. The only support Snake needed or wanted on an infiltration mission was over codec. …radio. Was over radio.

Speaking of radio, the helicopter pilot was yammering over his. "Snake, the purpose of your mission is to infiltrate the enemy's stronghold. You must collect information from your co-workers."

"If I can find them," Snake said, mostly to acknowledge. He drew his handgun - he could have sworn FOXHOUND always did things OSP, even for small arms - maybe there was a policy change he hadn't heard about? - and started making his way through the jungle, silently. As strange as it was, he wasn't about to complain about being able to bring a Beretta M92F. He was also able to bring a survival knife, although he wasn't as likely to use that - at least not on people.

On the downside, he wasn't equipped with a sneaking suit. He was stuck instead with standard fatigues from the waist down (except he was barefoot for… some reason…) and a tank top. He felt… oddly exposed (may not be the right word) dressed like this. More than he could really account for. After all, he'd only worn the skin-tight tactical espionage getup once before.

Also, he was unable to bring his cigarettes.

Damn it.

"Snake, I have bad news for you," the chopper pilot said over the radio.

"Go ahead," said Snake.

"You went into the enemy's airspace. We can't help you anymore."

Snake blinked again. Was this not a foregone conclusion? He was headed directly towards the enemy base, after all. He'd most likely be _in_ it in less than an hour.

"I wasn't expecting any help from you," Snake said, slightly confused. "I'd been assuming from the start you-"

"See you at the meeting point after the military operation is over. Good luck!"

"…"

 _I definitely should have retired after Outer Heaven_ , Snake thought with a long sigh as he continued through the dark jungle. _I could move up to Canada. Or maybe Alaska. Didn't Master Miller move to Alaska after he retired?_ He shook his head. What was he thinking? Master Miller wasn't retired yet…

Search lights cut through the foliage ahead. They were easy to avoid, true, but they weren't exactly cooperating with Snake's eyes' adjustment to the dark. It was to this end that he managed to trip over something - a root? - and, with really nothing else he could do in this situation, quickly crawled underneath a nearby truck.

He waited under there for a few tense minutes, but there was no sound of footsteps. Were there no soldiers out here? Just whoever was manning the searchlights? As far as Snake could tell, he was actually very close to the base now, and the lights themselves were probably situated on the roof. He might be completely alone out here - hell, the undercarriage of the car was stone cold. No one had been driving it any time recently. Maybe he _was_ alone out here.

But it was always better to be cautious, so for caution's sake, he stayed under the car for a few moments longer, listening carefully. Maybe he wasn't alone… there was human-sounding breathing coming from somewhere more or less nearby. Didn't sound like a soldier, though… too ragged and close to the ground.

Snake inched his way over to where he heard the breathing and, from cover underneath a bush, had a look.

It definitely wasn't a soldier, although he may have started out that way. He was a bruised man in an ugly orange jumpsuit, lying on the ground, half curled into the fetal position with his hands behind his back. Probably tied at the wrists. He was gagged, too. Clearly a hostage.

Of course, Snake couldn't just discount the idea that he was a trap. Even if the prisoner himself were harmless, there may be guards lurking close by. Although you'd think they'd make some kind of noise…

Snake picked up a small rock and gently tossed it so that it made a distinct _thmp_ on the other side of the hostage, who started and looked around fearfully. He caught sight of Snake (they were on the same level here, after all), but didn't make a sound. After a few seconds of absolutely nothing, Snake crawled over to him.

"Are you a hostage?"

He nodded.

Snake frowned slightly. He couldn't just leave him like this, but he also couldn't have him interfering with his mission. "If I set you loose, could you get out of here on your own?"

Again he nodded, this time more vigorously.

Snake sort of doubted that, but he didn't have any more time to waste on this guy. Rising to a crouch, he leaned over the man and cut the rope at his wrists, then stood up, putting his knife away and unholstering his gun again. The hostage rolled onto his back and pulled the gag out of his mouth.

"Thanks for your help," he mumbled, his voice dry.

"Don't mention it," Snake said, already stalking out of the clearing. It wasn't long until he practically tripped over another hostage, in the same condition and godawful jumpsuit as the previous one.

"Do you know your way through this jungle?" he asked as he cut the ropes on this man's wrists. The man nodded. "Good. Get out of here."

"Thanks for your help," the man muttered before picking himself up and shambling away.

Snake blinked in confusion for the third time in 45 minutes. Was there a reason why both the guys he just rescued had thanked him the exact same way? …probably not worth thinking about. Snake continued on towards the source of the searchlights.

His radio beeped just as he came within sight of the large, gray fortress.

"Lieutenant, I have arrived at point A."

"Point A?" _Where the hell is point A?_ "Turner, is that you?"

"Let's put the plan into effect."

"The plan? What are you talking about?"

"Good luck infiltrating the enemy's base." The radio crackled as Turner ended the call.

Snake didn't have time to call him back and ask just what the hell he was talking about when Turner appeared out of nowhere, sprinting straight towards the building and screaming. The guards standing just outside immediately noticed, firing their assault rifles and giving chase, and Snake took this opportunity to slip behind a tree only a few meters away from the door. He wasn't about to go save Turner's suicidal ass. Especially when this was probably 'the plan' he had just been talking about.

It only took a moment for the two guards to return with Turner, walking slowly and with his arms up in the air, between them. "I'll take you. Go ahead!" one of the guards grunted. Snake wondered if they actually spoke English in Teristan, or if this guard was just attempting to communicate with Turner. Either way, Snake slipped in the fortress door just behind the two guards (and prisoner) just fine. Once inside he immediately ducked behind some convenient barrels while the oblivious guards (and prisoner) disappeared further into the building.

Snake looked around. He wasn't exactly a stickler for interior design, but good God this building was hideous. The walls were rough, gray, pockmarked, and looked more like they belonged on the _outside_ , not the _inside_. And the floor, which looked oddly new, was some kind of unfashionable paneling in an eye-searing bright blue.

The auxiliary room Snake slipped into wasn't much better. In fact, it looked exactly the same, except it was devoid of cargo, furniture, or indeed any objects at all except for a card in the middle of the floor, which Snake picked up. Card 1, it said. Snake knew almost instinctually that this base was going to be filled with card-locked doors. He'd had plenty of experience with- no, he'd only dealt with it once. What was he thinking of? Must have been how many times he'd dreamed about Outer Heaven, in excruciating detail.

He exited the room and headed in the direction they had taken Turner. The building's ugliness didn't abate at all, but at least the hallway was filled with barrels, crates, and stacks of bags of cement(?) for him to hide behind as soldiers passed. Mostly burly black men with shiny silver pants and no shirts.

Snake wasn't going to ask and quite frankly he didn't want to know.

He slipped into another empty room to find… what appeared to be an enemy officer (or at least he was wearing something approaching a real uniform), who was just standing there with his hands on his hips, staring contemplatively at the floor when Snake walked in. Once he noticed the gun pointed at him, he raised his hands and blurted out, "Don't shoot. I don't know anything."

Snake choked him out instead and left.

In the next room he went into - still completely devoid of anything - he found Card 2, which was, like Card 1, just lying on the floor. The room next to that one held another hostage, who gave him an extremely hopeful look as soon as he saw the tank top and figured out that Snake wasn't supposed to be here.

"The corridor out there is filled with soldiers," Snake said bluntly, "there's no way you could escape on your own and I don't have time to escort you."

The tied-up man groaned and gave him an 'at least untie me' look. Snake, having already observed that the patrolling soldiers never seemed to actually _go into_ these rooms, figured he could spare the extra five seconds the cut the ropes on this prisoner's wrists.

"John moved to a different spot," the hostage said, removing his gag just as Snake was listening at the door to see if he could leave the room yet.

"…John?" Snake said, turning around slowly. "John… Turner? How did you know I was looking for him?"

The hostage didn't answer, just stared at Snake blankly. Feeling uncomfortable, he quickly left. He belatedly realized that the prisoner hadn't told him _where_ Turner was moved to. There was no way he was going to go back and ask, though. It wasn't even as though finding Turner was particularly high on his priority list.

More sneaking. More entering superfluous, empty rooms in the hopes of finding something useful. (If they left cardkeys lying around like that, surely someone would have dropped a pack of cigarettes somewhere…) Snake briefly wondered what kind of person ran this place. The hallway was packed with random junk, yet all these extra rooms had completely nothing in them? What? Why? In one of those pointless rooms, Snake found yet another hostage. This one was significantly less creepy than the last one and told Snake, unprompted, that "The enemy has a truth gas" upon being cut loose. Sounded like a gas version of sodium pentothal. Snake could think of at least one guy who'd probably love to get his hands (well, hand) on some. Or something like that.

Back in the hallway, that one soldier was getting a little too close for comfort. He was standing right in front of the crate Snake was pressed up against the other side off, scrutinizing it. (Snake wasn't sure if he suspected something or if he was just reading the text on the crate out of boredom.) As soon as he turned his back, Snake stole to the nearest door, opened it silently, and… stepped outside.

He facepalmed. This was the exact opposite of what he should be doing. _At least there aren't any guards in the immediate area_ , Snake thought as he pressed up against the door he had just exited, listening for the soldier he had just escaped from. Had he walked off yet?

Something shone dimly in the dirt as a searchlight passed through the jungle just beyond. Something long, round, and metal, just lying on the ground in front of a pair of parked Jeeps. Snake took a closer look - carefully, in case it was a claymore or something.

 _A silencer_ , he thought as he picked it up, _good. It must have been dropped by someone getting out of one of the Jeeps._ He quickly attached it to his Beretta. _This will make things a lot easier_.

Back inside again. The next mostly-empty room he went into contained a single canister labelled 'Truth Gas', complete with a mask. While Snake was morbidly curious as to whether or not it would actually work, he wasn't particularly interested in interrogating anyone, and he did not want to lug it around with him. He left the room as it was.

Eventually he found the elevator. It only went down, although Snake could have sworn that the fortress was more than one story high. He couldn't really argue with going to the basement, though. He had no idea where this building to go, and didn't know anything about the building apart from what he'd already seen. He wondered if the 'intelligence man' from the briefing actually existed.

The basement was largely like the first floor - ugly walls, uglier floors, shirtless soldiers wandering around, and plenty of miscellaneous cargo for Snake to crouch behind to avoid said shirtless soldiers. Also, plenty of random rooms that existed solely to exist and not to fulfill any sort of function. They could at least put a couch or something in one of these rooms. Some lockers. Something.

One of the rooms contained another officer, who was, like the first one, just standing there with a stupid expression on his face until he noticed Snake. Like before, his hands shot up and he exclaimed, "Don't shoot. I don't know anything."

"Are you all trained to say the same line upon encountering an enemy?" Snake said, his gun still pointed at the officer's forehead.

The officer just stared down the muzzle of the Beretta. Snake took a step forward, and he blurted out, "Weapons are ready to be shipped. It's difficult to get near the port."

"…what?" Snake said.

"Weapons are ready to be shipped. It's difficult to get near the port."

Maybe both the officers gave him the same line because no one here spoke good English. Snake knocked out this guy, too, and left.

A few rooms and an H&K MP5, some plastic explosives, and several grenades later, Snake figured he was suitably stocked up for whatever lay ahead - although if you had Card 1 and Card 2, there was a good chance you also had Card 3, so he still needed to keep looking into the pointless extra rooms. Hey, maybe one of them would contain an abandoned pack of cigarettes. Not this room, though. This room contained the conceptual opposite of a pack of cigarettes: an oxygen tank. Judging by the attached mask, it was meant for scuba diving.

As random as it was, and as unwilling as Snake was to actually carry this thing around (even if it did look optimized for weight), _something_ told him he was going to need it later. Reluctantly, he stepped forward to grab it… and became aware that his eyes and nose were burning. Shit, was this room filled with poison gas? He didn't stick around to see how bad it really was.

Hoping that either there was no more gas in the entire base or else he would find a gas mask somewhere, Snake made his way to elevator. So far so good. This one also went down. (Why couldn't the first one just have gone all the way down to the second floor basement? Why have two different elevators?) This elevator opened up in a large room - still with the ugly gray wall and uglier blue floor - containing nothing but a few guards. They all had their backs to him.

Since there was no cover, Snake just went ahead and shot the closest one in the back of the head. Thanks to the silencer, the guard's companion only noticed him collapsing. As he turned, Snake shot him right through the temple.

The third guard, standing by the exit to the room, hadn't noticed a thing. A fatal mistake on the battlefield. One punch-punch-kick combo later, he was down and Snake was out.

Beyond the door was a hallway. A long, narrow hallway. With - well, technically it could be called stairs, but it was more like certain sections of the floor were elevated in huge 'steps' for no apparent reason. (At least the floor wasn't bright blue anymore.) From what section of the hallway he could see, there was just one guard - although there may have been more beyond the almost non-Euclidean corner. Snake went ahead and shot him and ran down the hallway, quickly and quietly.

He peeked around the corner. (Seriously, who designed this place…) He wondered if the hallway were flooded for some reason, or if that was intentional, and looked up slightly.

"A security camera?!" he mumbled to himself.

It was a good bet, though, that the camera wouldn't be able to discern his shape in the dark water. Preemptively regretting the fact that his tank top was going to be clinging to him like a silver-haired Russian toddler (wait, what?) for the rest of the mission, he slipped into the water while the camera was rotated away and swam along the bottom of the corridor for as long as he could.

Emerging from the water at the end of the pool, Snake saw another guard. He was close enough that all Snake had to do was grab his ankles and yank - the guard went down and hit his head on the floor with a nasty _whack!_ If there were any other soldiers around, they should come- yes, here was one. Snake shot him between the eyes as soon as he laid them on his unconscious comrade.

It was a clear shot to the end of the admittedly _extremely fucking strange_ hallway. However, upon entering the back-at-it-again-with-the-blue-tiles-are-you-serious t-shaped room, Snake was confronted with five… big beefy cyborgs…?

"NO ONE CAN AVOID OUR ATTACK," the one at the front of the v-shaped formation bellowed at him. They all immediately rushed towards him like a football team consisting entirely of quarterbacks.

Snake jumped out of the way of the closest one and pulled out a grenade. The cyborgs(? they certainly _looked_ very metallic) run back towards the center of the room, although Snake wasn't sure if it was in response to his threat or just part of their strategy. Either way, Snake pulled the pin and tossed the grenade into their midst, and immediately followed up with another one. The explosion took out the one who had previously shouted at him.

The other football cyborgs didn't seem to notice the loss of their comrade and possible leader. They continued charging at Snake, then falling back, then charging. Snake continued nimbly dodging them and throwing grenades. Hopefully this fortress was as strong as it was unsightly. A collapse would not be ideal here.

One down, then another. Two left. Snake was out of grenades, so he pulled out the submachine gun he'd picked up earlier and ran to the other side of the room. The cyborg quarterbacks seemed almost confused and turned stupidly around, just in time for the one slightly closer to Snake to take a bunch of hot lead to the face. He went down. The remaining one charged at Snake and met the same fate. He fell without saying a word.

Ears still ringing, Snake surveyed the damage. Who the hell were these guys? Had they known he was coming, or did he just manage to walk into their party room?

With extra care, he nudged open the door at the back of the room. The room beyond had a handful of soldiers patrolling, but if they'd noticed all the explosions and gunfire just now, they didn't care. Maybe Snake really _did_ manage to walk into their party room. Anyway, this room saw the return of the perennial mysterious crates and convenient barrels, so Snake just used them as cover to reach the elevator.

This one went up, although it was hard to tell if Snake had returned to the upper level of the basement or the first floor. Wherever he was, there sure were a lot of crates in this room.

Something moving in the corner of his eye caught his attention: as soon as he had entered the room, two flattish orange blocks had mechanically slid across the floor to rest side-by-side in front of the only door out of the room.

 _Some kind of security mechanism?_ Snake wondered. There weren't any guards in the room, so he was free to use his knife to pry them off their tracks and grant him access to the door. A waste of time, and a waste of resources on the enemy's end.

The elevator must have taken him up to the first floor after all, because now he was in a paved interior courtyard that sort of resembled a parking lot, although there weren't any vehicles he could see at the moment. Just large shipping containers that blocked the patrolling guards' line of sight.

His radio beeped. "Lieutenant! It appears that John is a hostage on the ship." It was Myer.

"Where is the ship?" Snake asked him, although he didn't answer. Sighing, Snake headed away from what he presumed was the center of the building. That officer earlier had mentioned a port… if it was part of this facility, chances were good that it was on the outskirts of it.

He was closer than he thought. After only a minute of sneaking, the sound of a large body of water reached his ears. Moving closer, dodging sentries, Snake eventually came in sight of a large docked freighter. Some straggling soldiers were just boarding it. Snake briefly wondered about the geography of this area - this boat was clearly too big for a river, but he didn't smell salt, so maybe this was a particularly large lake - and dashed up the boarding ramp. He immediately took cover behind some barrels. One of the guards he had followed on looked around a few times in suspicion, but shrugged it off. Snake breathed a silent sigh of relief.

He looked around as the ship lurched out towards relatively open waters. It seemed to be a perfectly sensible ship, or at least a perfectly sensible deck, apart from the awful pea-yellow color. Hopefully he wouldn't encounter the same incomprehensible interior planning as the fortress… anyway, he had to start his search immediately. That officer had mentioned shipping out weapons, so it was very possible that the suspected Metal Gear was on this very boat. Oh yeah, and Turner might be too.

The soldiers on this ship weren't too easy to avoid, since any incidental noise Snake made was covered by the sound of the water. That was especially good, because Snake was at a slight disadvantage due to the fact that he was getting slightly seasick. He thought of pentazemin for some reason.

In one of the rooms he searched, Snake found a hostage who told him "John has moved to another place. It looks like there's something important at the bottom of the ship" as soon as Snake removed his gag.

 _Something important?_ Snake thought. "Do you know how to get to the bottom of the ship?" The hostage just shrugged awkwardly.

One of these doors had to lead below deck… Snake tried another one. He found an officer in it and - did _all_ of these officers just spend their time staring at the wall with their hands in their pockets? Were they even officers? Maybe they were just guys who dressed like officers and were told to stand quietly in empty rooms so they would be well out of the way.

"Metal Gear has no weak spot," the officer told Snake, raising his hands in surrender.

"Metal Gear…" repeated Snake, "so it really was a Metal Gear after all."

"Let's destroy the ship and ammo dump," the officer said.

There was a long pause.

"What?" Snake said.

"Metal Gear has no weak spot. Let's destroy the ship and ammo dump."

…whatever he was saying, it was probably lost in translation. Snake knocked him out just to be sure. He wondered what language they _actually spoke_ here, and why he hadn't been told in the first place.

The next room he looked into had some kind of platform elevator. It looked fairly unsafe (no handrails), but that didn't really matter; what did matter was the fact that Snake needed to investigate the bottom of the ship, and this was how he was going to get there.

On the way down, he wondered if Metal Gear was really on this ship. If it was, he would probably have to destroy it, which would most likely mean sinking the ship. He… really didn't want to do that.

Below-deck was marginally easier on the eyes, although there were still too many patrolling soldiers for Snake's liking. Just once he'd like to see an enemy holding where they had faith in the guards on the perimeter and left the interior unsurveilled… his radio beeped again. He clapped a hand over the speaker as the soldier nearest to his position looked idly around. If he'd heard Snake's radio, he didn't seem too interested or concerned. Good.

"Hey, Snake. Are you OK? I'll see you soon," came over the radio, muffled under Snake's fingers. Sounded like the helicopter pilot. Was there _any_ good reason for him to randomly call in like this? And what did he mean by "I'll see you soon"?

As vaguely ominous as that was, Snake didn't have the time to worry about it. As soon as the guard near him stopped glancing around and continued on his patrol path, Snake resumed carefully and methodically searching the small rooms that dotted the ship. (Apparently the freighter had been designed by the same genius mind behind that fortress.) He picked up a flare gun, flares to go with it, more grenades, and even claymores, but had yet to see or hear anything more about Metal Gear or find another elevator.

One room actually had stuff in it: three cement-bag barricades. Snake didn't lower his gun - odds were, something was behind at least one of the piles, and that something could very well be an enemy soldier. He carefully advanced.

"HERE ARE THREE GRAVES FOR YOU! HA, HA, HA!"

Three fat, shirtless men with closely shaved heads popped up over the barricades (which incidentally weren't very tall, so these guys were either very flexible or standing in holes). One of them lobbed a grenade. Snake leapt to the side. Two more grenades detonated where he had just been standing.

He hurried to grab his own grenade and threw it at the nearest one (the one on the left), who ducked behind his bag barrier - not that it helped him. Snake had thrown the grenade over the cement bags and, judging by the brief clattering before the explosion, into the hole. Two remaining - hopefully no one was about to accidentally blast a hole in the side of the ship. Snake decided to run up close and take them out with his handgun, but as soon as he started advancing towards the middle barricade, a well-thrown grenade forced him to retreat back towards the wall.

He threw another grenade. It was a good thing that these were fairly weak - as long as Snake could dodge them, the only real damage was to his hearing. And so far the freighter seemed to be taking the beating just fine.

The grenade bounced off the cement-bag barricade and into the hole of the man behind the next barrier on the right. The man in the middle looked away from Snake to his comrade for a brief second. Snake took this opportunity to time his throw so that the grenade would detonate right as he beaned the middle guy in his head. Which it did. Instantaneous death - something that might not have happened for the other two. Their legs had been blown off; if they were already dead, it was due to blood loss.

No time to feel bad about that. Snake headed through the other door in the room and was disappointed to find that it was empty apart from Card 3.

"All that for a keycard…" he muttered.

He grabbed it and headed back out into the hallway. He was on high alert himself - the ringing in his ears was lasting longer this time, and he might not be able to hear someone walking up behind him - and he fully expected the soldiers to be also. Surely they wouldn't just dismiss all those explosions.

Or maybe they would. There were exactly as many guards walking around as there had been before Snake had gone into that room, and they hardly seemed concerned about anything. Snake ducked into a side room, wishing he had some cigarettes. This was getting rather… surreal, and he needed a smoke. Unfortunately, there were no cigarettes in this room - just a mine detector. He added it to his ever-expanding inventory anyway.

He stayed in there until his hearing had more or less returned to normal, then headed back into the hall, snuck around a guard, and located the elevator. He rode it down another level and exited into a room containing a row of barrels and a singular guard on the other side of the room. The guard's attention was caught by the elevator doors opening, but he didn't initially see Snake because Snake was crouching behind the barrels. The guard walked over - a bad move, since as soon as he rounded the barrels, Snake swept his leg right into the back of the guard's ankles, sending him crashing to the floor. He hit his head hard on the rim of one of the barrels on the way down, ensuring that he would be out for a good while. Snake advanced to the next room.

It was dark.

Which was honestly the best-looking thing he'd seen since he'd left the helicopter.

Snake pressed up against the wall and waited silently, listening for footsteps or breathing or anything else to indicate that there were soldiers in here. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he became aware of several large _shapes_ looming in the dark before him. Was this cargo hold? Could one of these shapes possibly be… Metal Gear?!

Hoping he was correct in his assessment that there was no on else in here, he drew his flare gun and lit up the room. The dim, flickering orange light revealed what weapons were being shipped:

Not just Metal Gear.

 _Four_ Metal Gears.

"No…" Snake whispered.

He approached one. Four Metal Gears? He felt like he should be more surprised at the prospect of someone mass-producing them. But… he wasn't. He felt strangely unimpressed and, looking closer, found reason to be: these Metal Gears were completely nonfunctional. They appeared to just be empty shells of Metal Gear's armor plating, or maybe models. No, definitely models. They looked to be about half the size of a real Metal Gear - less, even. A child couldn't fit in these cockpits.

Relieved at the fact that they weren't real Metal Gears but also confused as to why these were down here (or even existed at all - _one_ made sense, he supposed, but not _four_ , unless there were small details changed that he hadn't been able to discern in the flare's light), he continued to the other side of the cargo hold and entered a hallway. Still no enemy soldiers…

At the end of the hallway was a large pile of munitions. Snake pulled out some plastic explosives and looked at them. Sure, blowing up the ammo dump _seemed_ like a good idea, but it would also sink the ship. Snake didn't want to be caught on a sinking ship ag- for the first time.

And a lot of people would die.

That hostage from earlier was still on the ship and would have no way to get off.

Turner may still be on the ship, too.

Snake attached the plastic explosives to the carefully stacked ammunition boxes, set the timer, and walked back out into the dark hallway. The explosion rumbled behind him and the ship jarred. Wait, hadn't he set the timer for longer than that? Much, much longer than that? Welp. Time to go back up to the deck and steal a lifeboat. This had been an almost completely pointless detour…

He radio beeped as he was hurrying past the Metal Gear models. "I set the transmitter," the chopper pilot said, "Climb up the deck and use the radar. Hurry up!"

"You want me to do what?" Snake said as he entered the non-OSHA-compliant elevator. The pilot didn't respond. "Hello? Do you copy?"

As he exited the elevator, he realized that all the guards had suddenly disappeared. Probably not a good sign, but convenient for now. Snake pressed forward, wary but not slowing.

He reached the deck. Still no sign of guards. The freighter was tilting dangerously now - maybe thy had all evacuated ahead of him? There weren't any lifeboats that he could see; that would explain it. Then again, he wouldn't entirely be surprised if he found that there had been no lifeboats to begin with.

Remembering the chopper pilot's slightly incoherent instructions, he checked his miniature radar. Sure enough, there was a little flashing blip from (presumably) the transmitter. So the pilot was here, after all?

The radar screen didn't contain anything fantastically useful, such as, say, a little map of his area, but Snake did his best to follow the transmitter's signal. Perplexingly enough, it lead him inside the structure of the ship, where you would most certainly not find a helicopter. He had reached the room where he had held up the crazy officer earlier when there was another explosion - blasting a hole in the wall of this room. He looked through it.

So apparently there was a helipad on this completely inaccessible part of the ship. That settled it. The architect responsible for that stupid base he had just infiltrated had also had a hand in this freighter's design.

Could be worse, though. Could be an elevator in a women's bathroom.

…that _would_ be worse. Why did that occur to him, anyway?

Hovering just over the tilting, rocking helipad was a FOXHOUND helicopter. Snake sprinted over to it and had to leap in order to actually get into it. He was unsurprised but not particularly let down to see that the chopper was conspicuously devoid of one John Turner.

"Congratulations!" the pilot yelled at him.

"…what?" Snake said over the roar of the blades as the copter rose into the air.

"Metal Gear is destroyed."

"No it isn't. The Metal Gears that they were transporting on this ship were actually-"

The pilot cut him off. "But," he said, "we have confirmed the existence of Metal Gear 2."

"Metal Gear 2?!" Snake said, "look, the only thing I've destroyed tonight was-"

"Now Nick is missing. Contact your person at the enemy's base."

Snake fell silent. Metal Gear 2? Person at the enemy's base? What was the pilot _talking_ about? Also, Myer was missing? Polished grenades aside, Snake had assumed Myer to be the more competent one. Well, he supposed he still was, in the sense that it had taken him a few hours longer to get captured. Why didn't they just let him go in alone again…?

The helicopter headed off in a seemingly arbitrary direction. Off to part two of this mission… it had already been a long night, and it was just getting longer.

And Snake was still in his wet clothes.

He _really_ needed a smoke right now.


	2. Chapter 2

The drop point was in a field this time. Snake didn't know how far away he was from the base he had originally infiltrated. Part of him didn't really care. He wasn't sure the chopper pilot knew, either. He had come to expect …not much from that guy.

Snake mentally reviewed the situation. He'd been sent on a mission to see if this unnamed enemy organization had a Metal Gear and, if they did, destroy it. (He had definitely _not_ been given enough information to start with.) There were two men, John Turner and Nick Myer, who were supposed to assist him, although Snake would have _greatly_ preferred radio support instead (he wasn't getting it now). Turner and Myer had both been captured by the enemy, most likely in astoundingly stupid ways. (Actually, he'd seen Turner get captured, and it was indeed astoundingly stupid.)

After a ridiculous detour on a ship and much more proximity to detonating grenades than was, strictly speaking, optimal, Snake's mission goals were changed only slightly: this unnamed enemy organization _definitely_ has a Metal Gear. Go destroy it. Also, rescue Turner and Myer.

Snake wondered if this 'Metal Gear 2' was the same Metal Gear he had originally been sent in to investigate, or if there was now an unaccounted-for Metal Gear after he had blown up those scale models on the ship.

Also, his clothes were still wet, and his tank top was outlining every individual muscle in his torso. If he was going to end up wearing something so clingy anyway, why couldn't he just have worn a sneaking suit?!

Anyway. The mission. He was in a drab, dead field, crouching behind some rubble as he surveyed the area. No soldiers in eyesight, although there was a pair of camo-painted armored vehicles and several sandbag walls a ways away. Snake wasn't entirely sure where he was headed and could only assume that _forward_ was where was supposed to go.

Before he did, he pulled out his appropriated mine detector. There was only one reason he could think of as to why this area should be completely deserted, and sure enough, it was mines. And although the mine detector he was using wasn't particularly good, it still allowed him to pick his way through the minefield without too much trouble. (He wondered if the enemy had parked the trucks before planting the mines, as camouflage. Because it wasn't like they could just drive in afterwards. …unless they were equal parts stupid and lucky.)

He raided a convenient shed-like room for more grenades (he was really starting to hate grenades) and came across a dry cell. He suddenly remembered being told that his radio had a short battery life, checked it, and recharged the battery.

Immediately his radio started beeping and Snake regretted recharging it. It was true that he liked having someone to talk to, but he _really_ didn't want to talk to anyone who either ignored everything he said or sounded like they were in the middle of a stroke. Or both.

"The secret entrance must be somewhere on the grounds," the pilot said.

"Secret entrance?" Snake said. The pilot didn't elaborate. Just hung up.

Asshole.

At least Snake had some semblance of an idea of what to look for. Which for now just meant heading in the direction he was already headed in and checking out any door he came across. One room yielded some R/C missiles. Another one had a hostage in it.

"Nick says to be careful of John," the hostage advised him.

"Nick Myer and John Turner?" Snake said. The prisoner nodded. "Why do I need to be careful of Turner?" The prisoner shrugged.

Snake almost called the pilot (the closest contact he had to a CO for this mission, for whatever reason), but decided against it. It would accomplish… nothing. He would just have to keep this exchange in mind when/if he found Turner again.

He pressed forward. He still couldn't quite figure out if the field he was in was some kind of absurdly large courtyard or if this building-like structure that surrounded it was more like a fence. Either way, why were there so many mines planted here?

Something shifted behind him. He whirled around, Beretta M92F at the ready. There was a soldier, and an R/C missile launcher, peering out from underneath some sandbags, which the soldier was propping up with one arm. He tried to retreat back into his hole when Snake saw him, but his launcher got snagged on the bottommost sandbag, and Snake shot him in the forehead. The sandbag stack tilted over, bags sliding everywhere, one of them detonating a landmine Snake had recently stepped over. The hole the soldier was hiding in crumbled around him.

"Huh," Snake said out loud. This probably wasn't the only soldier hiding in a hole beneath a pile of sandbags, as flimsy of a strategy as that seemed. Also, this was probably the secret entrance the pilot had told him about. Except a secret entrance would be much less likely to collapse, probably.

So basically Snake had to look under every sandbag stack in the area while trying not to be shot by R/C missiles.

How wonderful.

Time seemed to cease existing as Snake underwent the tedious task of searching for the presumed secret entrance. This would be much easier if there were a soldier he could tail or something. But no. The only soldiers he could find were easily-startled R/C missile launcher-toting men who flailed in surprise whenever Snake shoved their sandbag stacks over. The sandbags would inevitably fall on a nearby mine, dislodging the sides of the hole and knocking out the soldier in it.

Eventually he found it, though. Looking down it, he saw that it was a fairly short drop with water at the bottom. He couldn't tell how deep, but his clothes were already damp anyway. He jumped.

He landed in a long tunnel filled with water. It could have been part of the sewer system, but thankfully the water seemed at least mostly clean. Only a few meters in front of him there was a wall, and just under the waterline on this wall was a pipe large enough for Snake to fit through. That had to be the way forward…

Snake equipped the oxygen tank he had picked up what seemed like ages ago and began swimming through the pipe. He encountered a few grates, but with a small amount of plastic explosives and awkwardly swimming backwards to get out of the blast radius, he made short work of them. After a ways, the pipe opened back up into a flooded hallway (or maybe it was still technically a pipe; the point was that Snake could comfortably stand now) with moving security cameras.

 _Seems like an odd place to put those_ , Snake thought, removing the scuba gear. All in all, though, it was one of the most normal things he'd seen since the initial briefing.

He ducked past them easily, and also avoided some sinister-looking metal balls drifting in the water. Probably mines or some other unpleasant thing. At the very end of the pipe/hallway was a guard, who Snake shot in the back of the head before leaving the water. He would have heard the water dripping off him as he climbed out.

After exiting the passageway, it only took Snake a few seconds to locate an elevator and rode it up back to the surface. The only place exiting the elevator lead to was another section of the courtyard… field… area.

Snake felt dissatisfied.

The radio beeped.

"I've been captured in the transport train but have set up the transmitter." It was Turner.

"Is there no way you can escape yourself?" Snake grumbled into the receiver. This op was taking long enough as it was, and if Snake _had_ to spend valuable time rescuing people, he would rather it, instead of a grown-ass man who was either Navy or Air Force, depending on who you asked, be a hot chick with a great ass who could handle herself otherwise or maybe a surprisingly cute anime otaku whose literary analysis skills left much to be desired.

Woah, where the hell did that surprisingly gay last thought come from?

The train was right around the corner, and was stationary. Snake figured that if he was quick enough, he could get on, grab Turner, perhaps ask him about that message Myer had evidently left a prisoner to pass on to Snake, and get off _before_ it got moving. So Snake took out the two guards milling about in front of it and dashed on.

And the train started moving.

 _Damn it._

The radio beeped again. Turner again.

"There is no trap on the train."

Snake stared at his radio.

Well. Whatever Turner the incredibly obvious double agent said, Snake had pretty much no choice but to keep moving through the train. He needed _something_ to do, at least. Maybe the train would take him to where Metal Gear 2(?) was located, or maybe he could just reach the front of the train, stop the engine, and walk back to where he had just been.

So Snake started heading through the cars. More irritating than the occasional soldier (now buff tank-top-wearing guys with long hair and, apparently, jaundice) were the random sections of floor that were just _covered_ in nails, which was obviously not a good thing when you were _fucking barefoot for some reason_. Some of them were in such inconvenient spots that Snake had an extremely difficult time getting around them - which wasn't actually bad planning, he supposed, as long as you could assume that the _only_ person walking around in this car would be someone that you'd want to take damage. Which was not a good assumption.

Also, the couplings between the cars were extremely shaky. Not too hard to get across, although Snake did note that it seemed to be a hell of a lot darker out now than it was before.

Radio again. Turner.

"I'm in the third car. There are no enemies here."

Snake ignored him. He was already going to pass through there anyway.

He also continued looking into the little rooms in the cars, wondering if he was supposed to find a Card 4 around here somewhere. He did find a prisoner who told him to "Jump off the coupler between cars when the train stops." Snake left quickly.

Also, he did actually find Card 4 in the fourth car. At least this train detour wasn't a total loss. Although now that he had Card 4 he felt almost obliged to double back to the third car, since there was a locked door in there that he could probably open now. Turner was likely in there…

Actually, Turner _was_ in there. As soon as Snake entered the room, he shouted, "Quickly! Release my rope."

Snake didn't lower his weapon. He advanced cautiously towards Turner, saying, "First I'd like to ask you about-"

The floor fell away from under his feet. Snake jumped back to avoid falling into the train's wheels.

"I am not John Turner," Turner said, releasing himself from his bonds, "I'm a spy."

"A spy? What about the real John Turner?" Snake said, "the John Turner who came here with us… was that you, or-"

Not-Turner interrupted him. "I'm shocked you got so far. Now, prepare to die!"

"Not gonna answer my questions, huh?" Snake said, readying his handgun.

Not-Turner immediately started busying himself laying claymores. _Oh, this is stupid_ , thought Snake, so he pulled out his R/C missile launcher and shot a bunch of them at the imposter without bothering to steer them. The fight was over in seconds. Not-Turner died without a single word of explanation.

 _I wonder if Myer could fill me in_ , Snake thought.

He stepped around the claymore and grabbed some kind of gauntlet thing off of the imposter's corpse before he left. It looked like it was similar to a mechanical muscle suit, except only for the arm. Might come in handy. At the very least, someone could take it apart later and see how it works.

The train screeched to a stop just as he was leaving not-Turner's room. He jumped off the coupling, like the hostage had advised, before any guards exiting the train could catch him at the door.

The train's destination was rather like the field/courtyard it had just left from, except the grass here looked alive, if malnourished. It wasn't too far away, judging by how long the train had been moving, so Snake supposed he was still technically on-campus here.

The radio beeped. "Sorry about this late communication," Myer said.

"Myer, listen," Snake said, "about Turner-"

"The military operation is a 'go.'"

"The-? Myer, I just killed someone pretending to be Turner. Is the real Turner still a prisoner? Did he even come in with us?"

Myer didn't answer. At this point, Snake didn't know what he expected.

He continued through the twists and turns of the enemy fortress and took out his frustrations by using the power gauntlet thing to shove large pieces of rubble around and blowing up walls, which sent all the guards in the area into an alert, which he watched from their collective blind spot behind the rubble he had just been shoving around. In Snake's opinion, plastic explosives were a completely legitimate way to get through a maze.

He also rescued a hostage.

"Thanks for your help."

"Do you know where I can get some cigarettes?"

"Thanks for your help."

"…" Did some of these prisoners only know one phrase in English?

The situation repeated itself with the next hostage Snake found. Beyond him was what could only be described as a moving platform puzzle.

Now _that_ was out-of-place.

But Snake could see two doors on the other side of the inexplicably bottomless pit with inexplicably floating wooden platforms sliding around in a set pattern over it. And so Snake carefully stepped from platform to platform, relieved that they seemed as solid as actual ground and didn't tilt or sink under his weight.

His reward on the other side of the first door was a shotgun. He grabbed it and rode the platforms (still weird) to the other door, which lead to a walled-in outside area. He blew up one of the walls, shotgunned the soldier who had been on the other side of the wall, and rolled behind a stack of sandbags before any other soldier got the opportunity to figure out where he was and open fire on him.

Crouching behind the sandbags, he noticed the bottommost one dipped strangely into the ground. Peering out to check on the guards running around near the ruined wall and wounded soldier, he figured he might as well check it out - since this was clearly another hole with sandbags piled on top. Meaning it might be another secret entrance.

He slowly, carefully - making sure that the whole stack didn't slump over and give him away - moved the sandbags over so that they weren't covering as much of the hole and peered down into it. There wasn't water this time, but the floor was close enough that he shouldn't have to worry about injuring himself as long as he landed properly. He shifted the sandbags over more just enough for him to be able to slip through (it was times like this that he wished that he had a slight, small frame instead of his manly, muscular one) and dropped down.

Oh shit that was a guard.

His back was turned, though. Snake snuck up on him and choked him out. He didn't even see it coming. Snake took a second to appreciate the fact that the guards in this underground passageway were dressed in actual uniforms - plain green uniforms with doofy little boxy hats - before continuing down, taking out soldiers and throwing empty magazines as needed.

He also crawled under a couple security cameras, then took an elevator up and returned to the courtyard maze.

Beep beep beep. Snake picked up the radio receiver almost reluctantly. Again, he didn't know which was worse: the fact that no one told him anything useful, or the fact that no one acknowledged anything he said. What a nightmare. He could at least go for some Chinese proverbs right now, as random as that was.

He was a little cheered by the fact that it was a female voice on the other side. "You can reach me at the main base. I have some important information."

"Who is this?" Snake said. She didn't answer him, which negated his earlier lifted spirits.

As he continued through the courtyard (picking up some landmines just in case), he recalled being briefly told that someone had already infiltrated the fortress, posing as a computer expert. Apparently her name was Jennifer X. Or maybe it was just Jennifer, and the X part only happened because no one knew her last name. Anyway, Snake couldn't think of any other woman who would call him promising information, so that was _probably_ her. He could confirm next time she called… if she called again…

He went back into the building, traversed another stupid out-of-place moving platform puzzle, left the building again, headed down a narrow alleyway, and dragged some sandbags out of the way so he could drop down another hole into another underground passage. Even though he hadn't been to this part of the fortress yet, he still felt like he was going in circles…

This underground passage was a lot like the first one, except more of it was flooded. At the end of it he took yet another elevator which exited out to a closed-off outdoor area - basically, more of the courtyard maze crap.

Except now there was a door.

And behind this door was not a room, but a stone bridge stretching over a river (probably connected to the same body of water the freighter had been on). Snake was relieved to finally be making some progress _for once_.

And then the first shell hit.

Snake dove for cover. Of fucking _course_ the bridge was being fired upon. Nothing was ever easy for Solid Snake. He peeked out above his cover (the end of the stout bridge railing) and saw the source of the shells: a huge tank slowly rolling back and forth in the middle of the bridge, leaving no room on either side of it.

Snake sighed. Fighting tanks was always awful.

He figured the quickest and therefore best way to get this over with was to sprint right up to the tank, hope he didn't get hit by its artillery while he was doing so, throw every single landmine he had on him right in front of its tires, get out of the way before he got ran over, and hang off the side of the bridge until the tank managed to blow itself up.

Which is exactly what he did. Fortunately, when you're right in front of a tank's tires, the people driving the tank won't really be able to see what you're doing.

After the explosions and rumbling of the tank died down, Snake, grateful for the excessively sturdy construction of the bridge, climbed back over the barrier and finished making his way down.

…he knew that all of that had been pretty reckless of him, but with no one to chastise him over radio, well. It didn't seem as bad.

Kind of a depressing thought, really.

At the end of the bridge was a large building that could, hopefully, be likened to the light at the end of the tunnel in that it was the last place Snake would have to sneak into over the course of this mission. He waited until he couldn't hear any footsteps in the immediately vicinity of the door, then entered. Stealthily. And. Well.

The inside of the building… it was hideous. Absolutely atrocious.

Like, remember in _The Exorcist_ , when that little girl projectile vomits? Yeah, imagine that, except add more tiles and paneling. It was like that.

Snake was sure that he knew several people who go absolutely insane if they had to spend an extended period of time in here. Fortunately, he wasn't one of those people. Or maybe unfortunately - if he had been, would they have just sent Myer and Turner in on their own? (Actually, no, because then there would be absolutely nothing done about the Metal Gear…s.)

And the worst part was that apart from how ugly it was, the building was really, completely unremarkable. There was no random junk stacked up, but plenty of walls and corners for Snake to hide behind. There were a few security cameras, but they were easy to evade, and the soldiers here dressed differently - green jackets and superfluous gas masks - but they weren't any smarter than literally anyone else Snake had encountered so far.

So Snake returned to his tried-and-true strategy of just slipping by just outside their field of vision and opening every single door he came across just in case doing so would lead to something that would get him just a bit closer to ending this mission. But the only thing he found on the first floor before locating the elevator was a pair of infrared goggles. Useful, at least.

The elevator took him up to the roof, where they had installed security lasers. Too bad someone had left their infrared goggles lying around downstairs - Snake got through them easily.

And he didn't know if he was bored or frustrated.

Here, though, was something that practically screamed 'THIS WAY TO THE MAIN BASE': a green-and-gold gondola whose wire swept way up into the mountains. It was parked right there, ready to go. Snake stepped into it and closed the door. With a gentle lurch, it started pulling itself up its path. Was this particularly stealthy and therefore safe? Well, no.

But Snake wasn't getting much done here.


	3. Chapter 3

The gondola brought Snake up the roof another building, this one much higher up in the mountains. The air was thinner and colder (and a damp tanktop and no shoes was _definitely_ not the most comfortable choice of attire here), but Snake had no problem with altitude. He noted the rectangular posts sticking up at regular intervals all over the roof and put his infrared goggles on. One easy laser maze later, he was through the door, down and elevator, and in a building with the exact same ungodly design as the one he had just left.

Groaning silently, he waited just inside the elevator door until the two nearby guards walked off, then slipped out and began looking around. He really wished these doors were labelled. If experience told him anything, Metal Gear 2 (which _could_ actually be the Metal Gear he had been sent to destroy in the first place, not an inexplicable second one) was in a hangar. But which door led to the hangar?

Not this one. This one contained a slacking-off officer who blurted out, "Metal Gear 2 is seven times more powerful than Metal Gear 1" when Snake held him up.

 _So there really are two Metal Gears here!_ Snake thought. "Where is Metal Gear 1?" he demanded. His superiors for this mission, whoever they were, seemed to think it was at the bottom of the nonspecific body of water along with that boat Snake had sunk - but Snake was sure that wasn't true. The only Metal Gear on that boat had been four non-functioning models, too small to do anything even if modified.

The officer didn't answer; Snake advanced on him, Beretta M92F aimed threateningly between his eyes. "What happened to Metal Gear 1?"

The officer still didn't answer; Snake grabbed him and choked him out. No need to waste bullets on this useless man.

In the next room that contained something even remotely interesting, Snake found yet another hostage. Although there was no way the hostage could escape or even leave the room, at least right now, Snake still cut the rope around his wrists so he could at least be slightly more comfortable.

"Thanks for your help," the hostage said.

"Do you know anything about Metal Gear 1 or Metal Gear 2?" Snake asked. The prisoner just gave him a blank look. Maybe some of these guys really only _did_ know one phrase in English.

Moving on, Snake picked up Card 6 in an otherwise empty room, some antidote (to what? Snake could barely read the label) in another otherwise empty room, and located another elevator, which took him back to the roof.

Some infrared lasers, a gondola trip, some more lasers, and another elevator ride later, Snake was in a building that seemed to consist mostly of zig-zagging hallways.

He located another hostage. As he cut his ties, Snake repeated the question he had posed to the earlier prisoner.

"What is Metal Gear?" the hostage said, confused, and added apologetically, "I have never heard of it."

"Hm."

Snake left the confused hostage and found the elevator. Back to the roof. Lasers, gondola… but at the end of the line was something strange: a castle. A large, stone, quasi-medieval castle in the middle of the mountains. It looked old, but not otherwise bad - in fact, it was quite impressive. Just… not at all what Snake had expected. Maybe the dungeon had been retrofitted as a hangar?

As he advanced into the castle, his radio beeped. "Lieutenant," a female voice said, "Nick is coming to us ahead of you."

"So Myer really was able to escape from his captors, eh?" Snake said, "By the way, is this Jennifer?"

"Follow him," was all Jennifer(?) said. Snake grumbled. It was like almost everyone in this op had collectively decided to pretend that he was mute.

Snake quickly found that the castle had been retrofitted with elevators, and rode one down as far as it would go - three floors. In a room not far from where the elevator let off, he found an enemy officer who said, upon noticing the gun pointed to his head, "The commander holds the key to this secret weapon."

"Secret weapon…" Snake said, "you mean Metal Gear? Where is the commander?" The officer just looked at him defiantly. Snake knocked him out and left.

In the hallway was a guard, so Snake ducked into another room that contained a prisoner who, like before, said that he knew nothing about Metal Gear upon being asked.

The next elevator he found went down another floor, so at least Snake was still making progress… assuming his theory about Metal Gear 1 or 2 being stored in the dungeon was correct. By his estimate, he was now at the ground floor. There were no guards, strangely enough, although there were plenty of crates. Unfortunately, none of them had any writing on them, so Snake had no idea what was in them. Hopefully nothing important, since they were _very_ securely put together.

He went through a door and into a narrow hallway. There were some security cameras installed here, although not very well, and Snake was able to exploit their blind spots and slip by. The guards weren't as easy - they needed to be taken out. Fortunately, they were either pretty unobservant or all harbored a deeply passive-aggressive grudge against their comrades. There was also an inexplicably flooded section.

 _I hope this doesn't mean that the dungeon is flooded, too,_ Snake thought as he waded through the water, going around the suspicious-looking floating metal balls. He was pretty sure that the Metal Gear(s) he had been sent in to investigate and destroy were not aquatic.

At the other end of the hallway, he found what looked like their armory. All the crates in here were still sealed, but a few of them had items sitting on top of them. He walked towards the nearest one and _rrrrumble!_

A wide hole opened up in the floor. Snake just barely managed to jump to the side in time. He peered over it - it looked like, for whatever reason, the only thing below this room was a very deep pit - and wondered if that was an intentional trap or if this castle was in more disrepair than he originally thought. Watching his step now, he went and picked up items.

First he got Card 5. Good. Next he got ammo. Then he got - _boots._ They were just his size, too, and new. And dry. He gratefully put them on.

Seriously, the fact that they had sent him in with no shoes was just… bizarre. This whole op was just one absurdity after another, wasn't it…?

He passed through the hallway again, then took a different door, which lead through another hallway. It was much the same as the other one, except less security cameras and more inexplicable flooding.

The room this hallway emptied into actually had guards in it, which slowed Snake down a bit but was otherwise perfectly passable. These guards were dressed slightly differently from the ones he'd seen so far - they were clad in a rich blue. Snake wondered why the enemy had so many different uniforms, and why the soldiers all the way back in the first area had not been wearing shirts. He passed through a room with no guards, but nails on the floor (not his problem now), and took an elevator. Unfortunately, this one brought him straight to the third floor. Snake sighed.

 _I wish I could just call someone and have them lecture me about local animals or the items in my inventory_ , Snake thought as he moved slowly through a circular hallway, careful to stay in the soldiers' blind spots. _Or anything, really. I just want to talk to someone…_

He slipped into a closet, closing the door silently behind him. The lack of radio support was really starting to wear on him, although it was definitely exacerbated by the lack of cigs. He lingered in there for a minute, waiting for the footsteps just outside to pass, then picked up a directional microphone and stepped back into the hallway.

He found a bulletproof vest in another room. He put it on, which didn't feel too pleasant since his tank top was still wet. But it had been a while since he'd been ambushed, so it almost seemed like he was due.

He backtracked through the hallway and took the last door. Another hallway, although that was just what you expected from old castles, wasn't it? This one was the same as the others until about halfway through, when the ceiling suddenly became so low that Snake had to crawl to get under it - and it was in a water section, so that saw the return of the scuba gear that he had almost felt ridiculous for picking up in the first place. Hmm… the oxygen in the tank was close to running out. Hopefully he wouldn't need it again after this.

Anyway, removing the grates blocking his path didn't cause the ceiling to collapse, so Snake made it out of the strange little hallway just fine, exiting into an empty room with large columns in it. It probably would have been very impressive with some rugs and tapestries and suits of armor and whatever else they put in castles. On the other side of the room were the doors to yet another elevator, which Snake took up. At this point, he was hoping he was wrong about the dungeon thing.

Jennifer(?) called again as he was exiting the elevator. "I found the plans for Metal Gear 2," she said.

"What about Metal Gear 1?" Snake said, "are they the same thing?"

She ignored him, because of course. "The enemy commander's going to launch nuclear missiles all over the world."

"That's why I need to know about Metal Gear 1!"

"Hurry up!" She closed the frequency. Snake scowled.

He entered a nearby room and found another useless layabout officer, of whom he demanded, "Where is your commander?"

"Our commander is invulnerable," the officer said indignantly as he raised his hands in surrender, "no weapons can harm him."

Snake knocked him out and left, continuing down the wide hallway. Part of the floor crumbled away as he got close - this was probably why he hadn't seen too many guards on this floor. He checked the rooms nearby, which he could still reach by being careful; one contained a hostage who gave him the "Thanks for your help" line, and one contained Card 7.

He found another elevator, and took it down this time. Finding the commander may be a better bet than finding Metal Gear 2… and Metal Gear 1, assuming that they were completely separate machines. (Seriously, why was no one acknowledging that Snake had _not_ already destroyed the very Metal Gear he was sent here for?)

The radio beeped as Snake wound through the twisting hallway. Jennifer again. "The commander is located on the top level of this base," she told him.

Snake turned around to go take the elevator back up, but in the minute or so he'd been away from it, a soldier had taken up residence in front of it. Snake couldn't see if this soldier was within eyesight of another soldier, so he decided to just keep moving through this floor instead of shooting him and potentially causing an alert. This castle had had so many elevators installed that he was sure to find another elevator soon.

After pushing some bricks out of the way to access a blocked-off hallway, Snake entered a dark room. After several moments of listening carefully for anyone in there, he took his flare gun back out and lit one. The room was unremarkable, although in particularly bad shape. Snake tread carefully lest the floor collapse again.

The dark room connected to three other rooms, one of which contained a hostage and one of which contained an officer with no good information, and one of which was another one of those out-of-place moving platform puzzles. Snake wondered how much these cost to install and maintain, and how they worked in the first place.

Snake moved across the platforms (or rather stood still and kept his balance at the platforms moved him) to check out two rooms - one had a prisoner who knew nothing about Metal Gear, and one had a door on the other side of it. It was blocked by those orange block things from way earlier, but those didn't take too long to pry off their tracks.

As soon as Snake stepped into the room, his eyes and nose started burning. _Poison gas…!_ Thinking quickly, he removed his removed his bulletproof vest, slipped out of his tank top, and tied it around his lower face. At long last, the fact that it had never been able to fully dry out between water traps paid off! Although it didn't do much for his eyes, and it was hardly a gas mask. He had just bought himself enough time to attack the orange blocks with his knife.

Snake stumbled into the next room and gasped for breath. Damn. Hopefully he didn't do any permanent damage to his lungs. Or any more permanent damage, really. He looked around (blinking rapidly in an attempt to alleviate the pain in his eyes) as he resheathed his knife and put his tank top and bulletproof vest back on. One door in here, and he could just see another room around the corner. Still didn't hear any guards.

He opened the door with his foot, gun drawn. The man inside was lying on his side and was wearing that stupid orange jumpsuit Snake had seen about a million times. A hostage.

Snake crouched next to him and pulled out is knife to cut the rope. "Do you know where the-" His mouth went abruptly dry.

He saw the bomb before the 'hostage' spoke. "You have been trapped. Ha, ha, ha…"

Snake had barely made it out the door before it exploded. He looked around quickly for any guards alerted by the noise… none. He looked back at the ruined room, coated with what had once been the insides of a man. _A suicide bomber…_

There wasn't much else for Snake to do besides shrug it off and round the corner. No guards here (must have been why none came), but plenty of nails scattered about and sticking up. Snake walked right over them. The hallway narrowed, and Snake noticed the vertical notches on the walls.

 _A trap?_ Snake wondered. He took his now-practically-useless oxygen tank and rolled it over the invisible line on the floor between two notches. As it passed them, spears shot out of the wall and embedded themselves in the opposite notch. Snake nodded to himself absently. He was willing to bet that the tips were coated in some kind of poison.

He rolled through them, moving too fast for the spears to actually hit him. He continued down the hallway, only to hit a dead end. But something about it seemed… off. Looking at it more closely, he saw that the brickwork appeared much more recent than the rest of the castle; it must have been put here specifically to block access to something. And if something's access was blocked, that probably meant that that was exactly where Snake wanted to go.

He tapped the wall and found it to be thinner than the other ones, so he was reasonably sure that a small amount of plastic explosives wouldn't be _too_ detrimental to the rest of the castle. He placed them, retreated to the nearest corner, hoped that there weren't a bunch of soldiers on the immediate other side of the wall, and set them off.

He ran through the hole as soon as the dust settled enough to see if the coast was clear. There weren't any guards in the immediate area, although he did hear a bit of commotion from the other side of the wall next to him. He supposed that there were guards in the next hallway over who were now on alert. Figuring they were on their way, he slipped into an empty room and pulled out the directional mic he'd picked up a little while ago. He aimed it at the wall, intending to keep an ear on them, so to speak.

He must have pointed it at the wrong wall, though, because instead of soldiers on alert he just heard someone making casual conversation. "The commander's only weak spot is the soles of his feet," they said.

"Soles of his feet?" Snake muttered. That was pretty strange. What kind of man was he…? He shifted the directional mic over to the proper wall and waited until the enemy soldiers shrugged off the large hole in the wall and wandered off. He then exited the room and kept moving forward.

He encountered some more spear traps, but right after them he found another elevator, so that was good. He rode it down for what seemed like forever - looked like this one lead straight to the bottom floor of the castle. He rubbed his eyes tiredly. Hadn't Jennifer said that the commander was on the top floor? Maybe he should just go back to hoping he was right about the hangar.

The elevator opened up in a spacious foyer, with red carpeting down the middle, imposing columns, and and large statues of muscular marble men wrestling snakes. Snake almost smiled at that. He supposed that those statues would have taken on a very different meaning if the enemy commander were somehow aware of who he was.

He advanced cautiously, hiding behind the columns as he went. There were a few guards milling about, but he could see the explosives strapped around their torsos - and he really didn't want to deal with any more suicide bombers tonight. One of them was walking along the edge of the room, towards Snake, although he hadn't seen him yet… Snake circled around in front of the column and passed by the suicide bomber, using one of the statues as cover this time.

As he crept in front of the statue, there was an sinister click. Snake looked up just in time to see the strangled snake's jaws opening up wide on a hinge. An R/C missile rocketed out of its maw. Snake quickly ran to the other side of the room, baiting the missile into exploding into the side of the one of the other statues. This caught the attention of the suicide bombers, who began jogging towards Snake.

Mentally swearing, Snake sprinted down the middle of the room. There were explosions behind him, although he didn't know if they were from missiles or men. He ran into a side room, locked the door behind him, and pried the orange blocks in front of the other door in the room off their tracks before edging out into the hallway beyond. He saw a guard, but he didn't seem to concerned about all the booming coming from the foyer. Snake slipped behind his back easily.

He took the elevator up, although this one didn't go all the way to the top. While he was riding it, his radio beeped.

"Lieutenant," Myer said.

"Myer?"

"It was careless of me. I, uh…" he trailed off. There was something oddly chilling about his tone of voice.

"Myer, what's going on?" Snake said into the transceiver. No answer. "Myer! Myyyyyeeeer!"

Still no answer. Snake got off the elevator and swept the room with the Beretta's muzzle. Nothing, no one. He approached the nearest door, hoping that it wouldn't be another suicide bomber this time.

Opening it, he saw a man in an orange jumpsuit lying face-down. Snake didn't lower his gun - while this hostage looked to be in pretty bad shape, there still might have been a bomb attached to him.

As Snake approached, his foot knocked a keycard out of the way, sending it clattering in the direction of the wall. The hostage looked up at the noise. It was Nick Myer, give or take a few teeth.

"Myer?" Snake said, crouching next to him.

Myer coughed. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. "We have discovered that Jennifer is a spy," he mumbled.

"Jennifer? A spy?" Snake said, "no…"

Myer squinted at him through two black eyes. "A life support system is in Big Boss' room," he continued weakly.

Snake's eyes widened. "Big Boss? No! Big Boss is dead…"

"Lead him out, then attack," Myer said, then his head dropped to the ground. "Uh…" he sighed, then drew a breath - not a breath, but a death rattle…

Snake stared at him, processing all this. Big Boss? _Big Boss_ was the enemy commander all along? Snake's former commanding officer and father- wait, no, that wasn't right. Snake's brow furrowed. He was getting confused for reasons beyond just what was happening here. Big Boss was dead, though, he was sure of that. Or was he? Was this just someone who took the name? Was it the _real_ Big Boss, or…? Somehow it didn't seem so far-fetched that he had somehow escaped the self-destruction of Outer Heaven. Somehow, it…

And Jennifer was a spy? Snake would probably care more if he'd actually met her, or if she'd had any kind of real impact on his mission. Telling him that Big Boss was on the top floor may have been her way of leading him into a trap… but sometimes, going head-first into a trap was the only way to complete the mission objective.

So Snake was going to continue upwards. He picked up the keycard - Card 8 - on his way out.

He beelined for the elevator, except since all the doors looked the same he accidentally walked into an empty, unrelated room first. He picked up some smoke grenades there, then found the elevator and rode to the top floor.

He moved quickly through the hallway - the part right by the elevator had some guards that he just snuck around, but around there corner there were some kind of robot things. They were pretty much just machine guns mounted on metal boxes that moved around stiffly on their spindly legs. The technology wasn't quite there yet, it seemed. Apparently their target-finding AI left much to be desired, because Snake just walked by them.

The rest of the hallway was completely empty, and at the end of the hallway, as he stood just before a door, he heard a familiar voice over a PA system…

"This is Big Boss."

"Big Boss!" Snake yelled. "How are you still alive?!"

He continued as though he hadn't even heard Snake, which maybe he hadn't. "You destroyed Metal Gear 1 and made me a cyborg," he said.

"Metal Gear 1…" Snake said, "this whole time, did that really refer to the TX-55?" That only made things more confusing… "And I didn't make you a cyborg!" Snake added, "I saw your metal arm at Outer Heaven - you already _were_ one! You were just hiding it…"

"Now I want revenge," Big Boss said.

"And I want to be freed from these nightmares!" Snake burst out, and kicked open the door in front of him.

And there Big Boss was, just the same as Snake remembered him - a bitter old man with an eyepatch and a perpetual cold glare. He was wearing a blue uniform (which incidentally looked a hell of a lot nicer than what everyone else here was wearing) and didn't particularly look like a cyborg.

"Big Boss…" Snake breathed. Big Boss narrowed his eye and pulled out a submachine gun.

What followed was a battle of epic proportions, such that my meager writer skills cannot possibly relate it to you, the reader. Suffice to say much of it involved Big Boss chasing Snake around the room as he tried to take cover behind one of two large columns, and both of them firing submachine guns at each other. Imagine Yakkity Sax was playing in the background, if you think that's funny, although a more appropriate song would a bombastic, fast-paced, intense track appropriately titled 'Big Boss'.

Snake's bullets seemed to just be bouncing off of Big Boss without doing any damage, and in fact, they weren't. "Ha, ha, ha!" Big Boss laughed loudly, "I have no weak point you can penetrate." And then, in front of Snake's incredulous eyes, Big Boss suddenly swelled in size, his uniform ripping as his height shot up and his muscles ballooned to almost cartoonish proportions. Snake could now see that the parts of his body previously covered by his uniform were all comprised of shiny blue metal without even the slightest dent from the several magazines Snake had emptied into him.

"What the hell…" Snake mumbled.

A lesser man probably would have given up right then and there, but Solid Snake was no such man. His sudden bolt from the room was not be confused with giving up - he was just trying to buy himself some time. He remembered that conversation he had overheard about the soles of Big Boss' feet; if he could injure them, he could at least prevent him from moving, and possibly exsanguinate him too. But he had used all of his landmines back at the bridge, so he would have to use a more roundabout method… besides, Snake knew even before he heard the heavy, stealth-be-damned footsteps behind him that Big Boss wasn't about to let him just run away.

He slid into cover behind a column just before Big Boss rounded the corner. Big Boss slowed, obviously looking around for Snake. Snake knew he had only seconds before Big Boss found him - after all, it had been this man who taught him how to hide like this in the first place. Snake used these valuable few seconds to throw a couple smoke grenades his way.

They detonated, filling the room with smoke. Snake could still just see Big Boss' silhouette, immediately turned towards Snake's hiding spot, when he shouldered his R/C missile launcher and fired one off without bothering to steer.

As large and made of metal as Big Boss now was, the full force of an R/C missile exploding into his chest was enough to bowl him over. He hit the floor with a reverberating clang. There was a split second of silence before Big Boss laughed, as if to say, "You really think that will harm me?"

 _Not that_ , Snake thought as the smoke began to clear, _but this will_. And he threw a grenade directly at the exposed soles of Big Boss' feet.

 **BOOM!**

Whatever Snake had been expecting, it wasn't for Big Boss to explode as soon as his feet were damaged. But that was what happened. No final words, no expositing about _anything._ Snake didn't even have time to reflect on this before an alarm started blaring.

"WARNING! METAL GEAR 2 IS OPERABLE. PERSONNEL ARE TO GO TO THE UNDERGROUND SHELTER."

"Shit!" Snake swore, immediately running back towards the room Big Boss had been hanging out in. If there was one place in this whole castle that would have a direct passage to Metal Gear's hangar, it was here. He crashed through a door that he previously hadn't paid much attention to, and almost smacked into an attractive ginger woman in a tight, knee-length red dress.

"Jennifer?" Snake blurted out, backing up.

"Thanks, Snake," she said, smiling at him.

"What?" Snake said, pointing his gun at her. "Myer said you were a spy. Where is Metal Gear?"

"You can go into the secret plant from this door," she said, jerking her head towards the other door in the room.

Snake, after hesitating for half a moment, backed towards the door she had indicated, still keeping his gun trained on her. Her smile widened - it wasn't malicious or anything, and she genuinely didn't seem to care that she was considered a traitor - and she raised one arm in what she probably considered a goodbye wave and what Snake definitely considered a fucking Nazi salute.

Snake put that room behind him quickly.

The door lead out to the roof of the castle, where another gondola was waiting. Snake stared at it. It could be a trap. Just then, his radio beeped.

"Snake, follow Jennifer's instructions on entering secret plant," the chopper pilot said.

"So I can trust Jennifer?" Snake said. Had Myer been mistaken or lying? Or was Jennifer a triple agent who was ultimately on their side?

"Use copter missiles to blow up the wall to enter. The spot is marked by a flare. You must not fail."

"Right," Snake said. He assumed the wall was on the other side of the short gondola ride, where there was… a wall.

Snake had only ever come up with two flares, both of which he had already used in lieu of the flashlight he never found, so he threw a smoke grenade at the wall and hoped the chopper pilot got the message. He did. One helicopter-to-bunker missile later, Snake was inside a building with red interior scaffolding and green floors.

"WARNING!" the PA system blared, "THE FIRST ATTACK POINTS ARE NEW YORK, TOKYO, AND MOSCOW!"

He ran through the winding narrow hallways, glad that all the enemy soldiers and scientists had already retreated to their fallout shelters. He came out in a small room overlooking a large hangar, which contained one Metal Gear, a hulking olive-green monstrosity of metal and weaponry.

"Damn!" Snake said to himself. He didn't have enough time to go back down and figure out how to approach Metal Gear directly. He looked around. He was separated from the hangar by bulletproof glass, but there was a vent… maybe it lead into the hangar? Snake quickly shot the cover off with his handgun and pulled out his R/C missile launcher again.

He fired one into the vent and steered it using the tiny video screen attached to the launcher. When it approached the first grate, he got a brief glimpse of the hangar and the top of Metal Gear's 'head' before the missile blew the grate clean off the wall.

Snake took another good look at Metal Gear. It was heavily armored, and attacking the radome would be pointless since there was no pilot to open the cockpit. However, there was a glowing yellow eye-looking thing that looked important. Snake figured he would aim for that and hope for the best. (This really wasn't a very good mission.)

It took several missiles steered delicately through the vent and into Metal Gear's 'eye' before it suddenly stopped shining. The alarm stopped blaring. After a second, Metal Gear settled into its huge armored legs like a bird going to sleep.

"It shut down…" Snake said. His eyebrows drew together. What was this bizarre feeling of finality - like he had just completed the mission, like this was when the credits should roll? Metal Gear wasn't destroyed. He still wasn't sure if this was the only Metal Gear they had, and he had never found out why they were shipping scale models of Metal Gear, or where they were shipping to, or where they were shipping _from_ , because where on Earth _was_ this place? Why had Big Boss been here? What was up with Jeniffer? What the hell had happened with Turner? Why the hell had Big Boss been here, and as a cyborg to boot?! What the _hell_ -

* * *

Solid Snake (not his real name) awoke suddenly.

He stared at the ceiling of the _Nomad_ for almost a minute before raising his arm and covering his face with one hand, closing his eyes again. He was trying to recall the details of his dream even as they slipped away from him like water flowing out of cupped hands. He'd been a young man again, back with FOXHOUND…

"Oh, you're up, Snake?" came Otacon's voice from nearby.

"Mm."

"You were talking in your sleep again. Sounded like you were having a _really_ _weird_ dream."

"You have no idea…"

* * *

 **Yes, an "it was all a dream" ending. That's the payoff for all those references to canon I made throughout the fic. It's also literally the only thing that could explain away Snake's Revenge's plot holes.**

 **Anyway, hope you enjoyed. Normally this is the part where I thank my readers for all their support, but no one reviewed, faved, or followed. It's not too late to review or fav, though. Especially review.**

 **I'm saying you should review. PRAISE ME. CRITICIZE ME!**


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